Short Cut
by xoxo-Serena-xoxo
Summary: Written originally for GCSE English course - based partly on real life and partly on a few stories I've read on here. My first story, so it probably sucks along with my summary lol.


Short CutPrologue

I used to be a dancer. But then it started. I couldn't help it, I couldn't stop it. It just happened.

It happened by accident the first time. I was chopping an apple when I slipped. The sharp knife sliced gracefully through the soft skin of my left index finger.

That was the first night that I missed dancing.

Not that my parents noticed, my father was too busy at work – he barely ever came home these days, and my mother was too busy drinking herself into oblivion.

Chapter One

"Mum I'm home," I called into the darkness shrouding the living room, "Do you want anything to eat?" That was how I greeted my mum every time I got home from school or 'dancing'. I hadn't told Mum or Dad, but I had quit dancing months ago, two days after my first incident. I had carried on taking the money that my father put in my bank account every month, which was meant to pay for dance lessons, and began using it for different things. I had just purchased a sewing machine and some material – I was planning to make a dress.

"No, but you can fix me a drink!" replied my mum. I've known how to fix a drink since I was six years old. I have been served in a bar before that had worse drinks than those which I mixed daily for my Mum. I had been in a few various bars a couple of times – it was easier for me to risk getting caught buying a drink there than to sneak a drink from my Mothers' collection of various alcoholic beverages. I only manage to get served because I look a lot older than I actually am. I'm only fifteen, yet most bar tenders think that I'm at least nineteen, which doesn't exactly help when I'm trying to leave and the bar tender and other customers are trying to make a move on me.

I took the drink through to my Mothers' dressing room, where she often spent the evenings, watching the television that was perched on top of the dressing table, across from the antique chaise long. It was her favourite place to sit and have a drink.

"You had better have cleaned the house for when your Father gets home."

"Don't worry I have. I did it earlier this evening." Paranoid. That was a good word to describe my Mother. She always asked whether I had cleaned the house for when my Father gets home. If he was ever to come home that is. Should he come home now, he would see a perfectly clean house unless he was to venture into my bedroom. In which he would see scraps of fabric and bobbins of thread strewn around the room. I was using these to make a new school uniform. Well, not exactly make a whole new school uniform, just to alter the already existing one. You see no one at my school actually wears the uniform, if they even bother to wear it at all. My new uniform was the 'compulsory' pinafore dress - which I had altered by taking up the hem line, effectively making it into a mini dress and pulling in the bodice and adding extra detailing – a fitted white shirt, a beret – altered to match the extra detailing on the dress and a cardigan – hand died electric blue to match the detailing of the dress. I matched these with knee high white socks with little bows on the side and a pair of ankle high boots.

I didn't make any of it to actually get attention from my fellow classmates, quite the opposite, and it helped me to escape from the pain that threatens to engulf me. It didn't help as much as the cutting, but I had to cut (ironic I know) back on that for a bit as I had been abusing it quite a lot recently and it had come back and hit me in the face by making me almost constantly light headed for a couple of days. But it was better now and I could start doing it again soon.

Chapter Two

Tomorrow was the first day back at school after the summer holidays and my bruises that I had received from my Mum had nearly gone. My Mother had gotten so drunk one night that she completely lost control of herself and flipped out at me. I had ended up black and blue, but my skin had finally returned back to its normal creamy white complexion a few days ago.

As I strolled in through the ornate double doors that led into my form room, I had the sudden urge to run back, all the way home to the comfort of my bathroom. My bathroom that was my only sanctuary, where I cut myself and the only evidence anyone could ever find out about was the thin red lines running horizontally across my forearms. But I pushed that feeling to the side and took my usual seat at the front of the classroom near to the teachers' desk. I had been sitting in the same place in this class since I moved to this hell hole three years ago. I had moved from a state school in the middle of London to this private school that was situated in the middle of now where quite frankly, somewhere in Peak District. I lived in the nearest village like a lot of the people, who were not boarders, did. Most people thought that it was a quaint, little rural village with only a few shops and a couple of cafés. I found it a very boring place and it was always so quiet, with the exceptions of the church bells and the blasted animals that seemed to be _everywhere_ you cannot walk ten seconds beyond your front door without seeing at least three different species of animal. I loved the hustle and bustle of inner city life – you could just walk along the streets without anyone wanting to talk to you, or you could go and sit in a park and not see a single animal. Life was easier there, no one cared for anybody except themselves. Life was simpler then.

My parents only moved here so that I could go to the fanciest school possible. That was the only thing that they ever really did for me since I was about five and that wasn't exactly for my own good or happiness. That was the only thing that they seemed to agree on – showing anybody that cared to look how much money they had by spending as much money as possible. Only they hadn't counted on the economical down turn and so now they had to stop spending as much so as to be able to carry on living a lavish life style. This didn't bother me though, as I had never really had that much despite how much they tried to make it seem like it, and anyway I had bigger things in my life that I needed more. Like my sewing and my cutting.

I had never been very happy at school, but I was down right depressed at this school. I was always bullied for being too small and too smart. Although I don't see how you could be to smart, that's just illogical. I just think that when people said that to me they were just feeling compromised because they were too stupid. Anyway, as I have learnt, the smaller and smarter you are in school, the more you blend into the background. You never have any trouble with teachers – mainly because half of them didn't even know who you were.

Chapter Three

When the day had finally finished, I trudged out onto the street which led back into the village and along to my favourite café. I went there everyday after school without fail and always ordered the same thing everyday: feta cheese salad, followed by frozen yoghurt and a glass of ginseng tea. Ed, the café owners' son, was usually on shift there when I got there. He would always come over to me to take my order and to have a chat. I would often help him with his homework, despite the fact that I'm only in Year Ten and he was in the first year of Sixth Form. He was the only friend that I had in years and was the only person that treated me like a human being in years.

"Hey Leighton!" He exclaimed.

"Hi, did you have a good day at school?" This was how we had been greeting each other for nearly three years, since we had become friends. It was like our little tradition and the waiters and Ed's parents never came over to serve me anymore, and they laughed at our conversations, saying that we were like a newly married couple who were on there honeymoon, but without all the touchy-feely bits.

"Yeah, it was alright – Mr. Mahoney wasn't there, so that made it bearable."

"Urgh lucky you! I had double maths with Mrs. Macadamia – I think that a session in The Tower of London would have been more pleasant." I moaned. Mrs. Macadamia was the worst teacher in the school, closely followed by Mr. Mahoney. They were known by every person around school, even if they didn't personally have them as a teacher, for their unnecessary speeches they gave. The favourite one for the both of them seemed to be _'Evils of Modern Technology and Social Culture on the Unsuspecting Mind'_. The both of them were both very talented at giving completely useless and unrelated talks to bored school pupils. They would have been happier if they had been born two hundred years earlier.

Chapter Four

"Hey aren't you getting warm? It's really sunny outside and you are walking around dressed as though it's the middle of winter! Wearing a woolly jumper and gloves in the middle of a heat wave. Crazy that's what you are, crazy." Ed suddenly exclaimed whilst we were sat doing our homework.

"I am a bit warm, but I'm not going to take them off. Anyway the gloves are fingerless lace and the cardi is thin." I muttered absent mindlessly. I hoped that this would convince him to shut up. I only put up with wearing them to hide the evidence of what I did of an eve. I got teased enough as it was and I didn't want teachers thinking that they were helping me by sticking their noses in where it wasn't needed or wanted.

"Seriously?! You are going to pass out if you're not careful."

"No I want." He really should mind his own business especially when I was trying to do my homework.

"Yes, you will."

"No I won't." I hated it when we got into these stupid little arguments. They were so pointless and often bind-bogglingly boring.

"You are going to take that jumper off now or I'll have to do it for you because I don't want to have to go and visit you in hospital because you've over heated and got dehydrated." Without giving me a chance to object or rectify the situation Ed grabbed me and yanked the jumper and gloves off me in one quick sweep.

He looked down to my wrists and forearms before I could move them out of his eye line. I went to hide my arms but he grabbed hold of them and gently pulled them straight out in front of me.

"Ed can we not do this here please?" I begged him. His eyes rose to meet mine, his a mixture of anger, hurt, regret and confusion. My own were just filled with the one emotion: fear. Fear of what he would say and think, fear of what anyone else would think if they found out.

As quickly as he had taken my cardi, Ed stood and still holding my right hand, allowing me to hide the other one, he started pulling me towards the door of the café. I just managed to grab my books and bag before being dragged across the road towards his house.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Ed questioned me in a tone of voice I couldn't quite unpick. I think that it was a mixture of compassion and almost grief.

"I haven't told anyone."

"You could have told me." He matched my whisper. We entered his bedroom and I crossed the room and sat on his bed, feeling suddenly very shaky, whilst he stood next to his desk angled slightly away from me, one hand resting on the desk and the other pinching the bridge of his nose. That was the stance he usually adopted when he was either thinking hard or trying not to do something irrational.

"Why didn't you tell me?" his voice sounded pleading as he asked the question once again.

"Because I didn't want anyone to know. I didn't tell you because I thought that you wouldn't want to be my friend any more – you're the only friend I have." I mumbled leaning against his shoulder as he sat down next to me.

"I could never let you go." He moved his arms, from in front of me, and wrapped me in a tight embrace.

I can't believe that he cares. I mean, no one has ever cared about me. Why should anyone care about me anyway?

"Why do you care about me? I'm not pretty, I'm not happy - I cut myself for Gods' sake! I'm not worth anything!"

"I care about you because you _are_ worth something. No in fact you're worth a lot. You are the most valuable person I know! I had no idea before about all the problems that you have. I always just thought you were a shy person who doesn't know how clever and sensitive and beautiful she is!" Ed exclaimed in a tone of voice that I had never heard before.

"That means nothing. That's not going to help me. That's not going to stop my mother from treating me like a slave or beating me when she gets too drunk is it?" before he had chance to answer me I carried on "It's not going to make my father come home, it's not going to get me back to London, it's not going to make people like me and it certainly won't make my parents love me!" This made him speechless, it was the first time I had ever done that to him, leaving him just staring at me as though he were a person with a mental disability that made them unable to comprehend what I had just told them.

I can't believe that he actually cares. I mean, no one cares about me. Why should any one care about me?

"Why do you care about me? I'm not pretty, I'm not happy – I cut myself for God's sake! I'm not worth anything!"

"Because you _are_ worth something. You are the most valuable person I know! I had no idea before about all the problems you have – I always just thought that you were a shy person who doesn't know just how beautiful, clever and sensitive she is!" Ed exclaimed in a tone of voice that I had never heard any one use toward me before.

"That means nothing." My tone of voice was spiteful, even to my own ears and I immediately felt sorry for snapping at him, but I could not bring myself to apologise to him.

"Why did you do it?" I knew that this question would come.

"I…I can't tell you yet. But I will tell you – it might not be today, but I _promise_ I will tell you."

"I know you don't have to worry now." Ed carried on whispering soothing words in my ear as I sobbed my heart out, soaking his shoulder with my tears.

**Chapter Five**

Looking down I saw the scissor handles sticking out of Ed, the blades had sunk into his chest and blood was pouring out of the wound, soaking us both with the crimson liquid.

Pushing him off of me I stood up and pulled my dressing gown off – thankfully the blood had not soaked through the thick fabric and onto my pyjama top. I grabbed the door handle thrusting it open. I stepped out of the small room into the glaring light of artificial day that the strobe lighting provided. Leaving the door open, I slipped down to the floor with my back pressed against the wall and pulled the other pair of scissors out from the waistband of my pyjama bottoms, where I had stashed them after taking them at the same time as I took the others. Unwrapping them, I held them to my left wrist against the one bit of skin on that arm that I had not yet sliced – the stretch of skin nearest my hand, where the veins stood out a vibrant green/blue. Swapping hands, I placed the scissor blades against my right wrist. This unfamiliar sensation making me desperate to know whether it would give the same amount of pleasure as it once did on the other wrist. A slight stinging sensation gathered around the deep incision as crimson fluid flowed from me. I was not prepared for the pain that followed.

Once again the blackness came, quicker this time than it did the last time. From this I would not return. A cold feeling was spreading through me, faster as the tepid blood pooled around my slender frame.

Every time I had cut myself before, it was to relieve pain. Not to cause it. But this time pain came flooding from within me – filling me with an indescribable ache. I was so desperate to end this pain and all the memories and experiences that had caused it, that I picked up the scissors as best I could. Copying what I had done to Ed earlier, I plunged the blades in between my ribs.

The blackness completely shrouded me, at long last taking away all my pain.

From this I would not return.


End file.
